Wednesday, October 17, 2007

"Journeyman" Recap & Review - "The Year of the Rabbit"

Journeyman"The Year of the Rabbit"

Original Airdate 10-15-07

Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer

Vasser wakes up in a church during a wedding rehearsal. He’s got a big wrench with him but we don’t know why. It’s 1994. Spin Doctors play out on the street as Vasser gets his bearing and starts following people to see who he’s there to help. He follows a guy until he notices Katie on a television in the bar he always seems to find himself visiting.

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Vasser wakes up in a church during a wedding rehearsal. He’s got a big wrench with him but we don’t know why. It’s 1994. Spin Doctors play out on the street as Vasser gets his bearing and starts following people to see who he’s there to help. He follows a guy until he notices Katie on a television in the bar he always seems to find himself visiting.

Inside the bar he meets Melissa a woman waiting for a blind date. She’s nervous since she met the guy online and just got out of a bad relationship. Before the blind date can show up her ex-boyfriend arrives and gets in Vassers’ face. They fight and are kicked out of the bar just as the blind-date arrives.

Back in present day, Vasser makes his way home and it’s a mess. Water is leaking out from under the front door. Apparently he was doing some plumbing when he Quantum Leaped this time. Katie has bigger fish to fry since she’s been planning this big shindig at the museum for the last three months. She tells Vasser she’s worried he’s not going to be there on the night of the event and he promises he will, but she knows he can’t make that promise.

Vasser is beginning to question the physics behind his Quantum Leaps, and since he doesn’t have an Al hologram to explain everything he talks to the science editor at his paper. The editor says he needs to talk to Elliot Langley some scientist who knows about these kind of things. Vasser walks out of the paper and into the past.

This time it’s 1995 and Livia is in the bar. They talk until Vasser spots the blind date guy and follows him into a back alley where he spies the man buying a gun from a shady-looking guy. Back on the street he sees Melissa again and she remembers Vasser as the guy who punched her ex-boyfriend the year before. She’s engaged to Blind Date now and they are creating some kind of E-Trade company. Vasser tells her he’s worried cause he just saw her fiancé buying a gun. She tells him it’s for her, because she’s still being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. She drives away and Vasser spots the stalker in a parked car and confronts him. He’s a cop.

Back in the present Vasser gets a phone call from the mysterious Elliot Langley. Vasser asks about tachyons (particles that travel faster than the speed of light – sciencey stuff that has to happen for time travel). Langley tells Vasser he’s been following his stories in the paper and that he knew his father back when his father worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. Vasser offers to come visit the man at his office, but the man tells him he wouldn’t have clearance to get in the building. He asks if Vasser is building a time machine and Vassers laughingly agrees. Langley tells him he’ll get back to him and hangs up.

Vasser googles the woman and finds out she was murdered in 1997 and he cop ex-boyfriend was a suspect but was never arrested due to lack of evidence. Jack Vasser is out on a first date, when his brother calls to ask about the cop and what ever happened to him after he was a suspect in the murder. Jack tells Vasser that he’s a beat cop working in China Town.

Vasser and Katie are getting dressed for the big night and Vasser comes clean about his seeing Livia in the past and talking to her and he tries to explain that she is Quantum Leaping also, but Katie has too much on her plate right now and just wants to get to the museum. She’s going to have to get there on her own though, because Vasser leaps while she’s in the other room. She’s angry and she can’t find her keys. She calls Jack to take her to the museum her ex the cop is glad to help out.

Vasser is back in 1997 right before the murder. He tracks Melissa to her place where Blinda Date (now her husband) is flipping out about the company they started and the money that was invested. She’s got all his financial transactions on a disk but she won’t hand it over. He pulls and gun and Vasser clobbers him and takes the gun and jumps back to present day with the gun in his hand. He jumps into a cab and hightails it to the museum where he tries to explain everything to Katie. Jack locks himself in the bathroom with Vasser and confronts him. He turns away to answer a knock at the door and Vasser takes a moment to read on his iPhone that Melissa had been charged with the murder of her husband and when Jack turns back, Vasser is gone.

He’s back in 1997 on the night of the murder again. He lands in China Town this time, in a mah jong parlor. On his way out the door he gets a call on his antique cell phone. It’s Elliot Langley calling him in 1997 this time. Vasser says he just talked to him back in the future, and Langley hangs up on him again. He starts to try to find Melissa again, but runs into her stalker cop ex-boyfriend patrolling the streets. The two men go to Melissa’s and arrive just in time to see Melissa shoot her husband. Vasser plants the gun he took away from him on his last leap in his hands and the cop agrees that it was self defense.

Vasser’s work is done here and he leaps Back to the Future and he and Katie kind of patch things up in the cloak room of the museum. Another good episode. I like the introduction of some more mystery surrounding Vasser’s trips to the past with the Elliot Langley phone calls. 3.5 out of 5 stars.